Twitter: An old friend dresses up for Halloween

The timing is auspicious...Twitter dons a new face just prior to Halloween. Linda looks at the results and asks...Is it a mask or for real?

Left Screen

The @Mentions is just that – a way to view other Twitter users who have mentioned your account. Retweets looks like this:

Now you'll have a way to easily view retweets by others, by you and your Tweets that have been retweeted (yes, that would have been a very interesting sentence had it been written a decade ago). You can now save your searches, too. When you save a search, you can always come back and get the latest results for that query, without ever having to type in the same words.

To learn more about saving searches, visit the Twitter instructions on this topic.

I'm ashamed that I'm following only one list with my Appomattox News account, but there you go...now that I've shamed myself, I'll change my ways. Beyond this, the List option on the left side of the screen above your timeline shows your created lists, lists you follow and lists that mention you:

That is the end of the new features for the left side of your new Twitter two-page spread, except for some special features offered in the Timeline. I'll focus on those momentarily, after showing off the right side of this spread...

Right Side

If you want a quick view of you Tweet numbers, Twitter will offer this information at the top of the right-hand column in this new layout:

I can see, from the information noted above, that I have created over 5,000 Tweets, that I'm following over 1,200 Twitter users and that over 1,200 Twitter users are following Appomattox News. I found the last number interesting, as the only connectivity in Appomattox County is within Appomattox proper. So, while the county holds over 14,000 residents, only 1,761 people actually have direct access to the Internet in their homes. I know, also, that while county residents come into town to tap into the Internet at the library, not everyone in town has a computer, let alone follow Twitter.

So, I know without using any Twitter apps or by searching through my followers that not all of them live in Appomattox. But, I digress – perhaps in the near future I'll focus on how to discern your marketing through Twitter in another article. For now, I'm moving down the right side of the new Twitter layout to show you what to expect...

To provide you with more clues on how to discern your Twitter marketing, take a look at what Twitter is offering below the stats shown above:

I wish that "Favorites" meant other folks' favourites, but it doesn't...this is a list of all the Twitter Tweets that you have starred over time as your favourites. But, at right, you can see all the lists where you are listed on Twitter, starting here with the most recently listed. If you click on the numbers next to "Favorites" and "Listed," you can see pages with those lists expanded on the right side, where your timeline normally resides.

At the bottom of the right side on this new Twitter layout, you'll see this information:

Very simple – you have access to trends on Twitter, information for Twitter-for-Android and the usual links for Twitter's about, help, blog pages and other helpful information.

That's all, folks, for the new layout. Now to share news about the other #New features...